


The Human Variable

by EHyde



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Body Horror, Carlos used to be human, Cecil is Inhuman, M/M, Romantic Fluff, but also kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 01:31:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EHyde/pseuds/EHyde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos learns the hard way that some questions are best left unanswered, even for a scientist. Maybe especially for a scientist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Human Variable

_“… Carlos? Carlos?”_

He shifted towards consciousness. The Voice of Night Vale, fully corporeal, was bent over him, calling him. “You’re amazing,” he said. “You’re perfect,” and he reached out to the Voice to hold him tight.

The Voice flinched away and it was only then that he realized that what he’d reached with … hadn’t been arms. Oh, god.

“… Carlos?” The Voice was more hesitant this time. “Are you—are you still Carlos?”

Was he …? He was, of course he was, but there was something else, some _one_ else, writhing beneath his skin and pushing on his mind and—oh god, oh  _fuck_ , this wasn’t—this shouldn’t have—

His eyes were still closed, but he could sense the physical world around him perfectly, sense the Voice in front of him, and— _Cecil. His name is Cecil_. “Cecil,” he said, and opened his eyes.

The face that met his gaze was not the face he knew. It was only the barest approximation of a human face laid over a great emptiness and he wanted to throw up because  _this_  was what the human scientist had fallen in love with? “Carlos, I thought I’d lost you again,” said the Voice, and Carlos pushed the other thing in his mind away, pushed it away hard, because this  _was_  the man he loved.

Man. Right.

“I’m—” he began. “I’m not—alone in here.”

“This is all my fault,” said Cecil. “I should never have said—I’m  _sorry_ , Carlos.”

And now Carlos was puzzled, because this was no one’s fault but his own, he’d gone where he shouldn’t have, asked questions that should have been left unanswered. “You didn’t—” Then he remembered. Carlos, asking  _just how long have you been the Voice of Night Vale?_ And Cecil, answering  _oh, a long time, decades probably, but if you want the exact date you’d have to ask Station Management_.

Asking Station Management had been a bad idea.

“You didn’t mean it when you said that,” Carlos said. “I  _knew_  you didn’t mean it, and I knew coming here was wrong, and I—I’m sorry, Cecil, I’m  _really_  sorry.”

But it wasn’t wrong, and there was nothing to be sorry for, the other part of him, the  _new_  part, insisted. He had more information now. He had a clearer picture of reality. And wasn’t he a scientist? How could that possibly be a bad thing?

“ _You’re_  sorry?” Cecil asked, sounding genuinely confused. “For what?”

Carlos tried to sit up. The writhing under his skin wanted to reach out, wanted to unfold from this awkward human posture, wanted to— _no_. He took a deep breath, and the air tasted foreign. “I asked questions. About you.” Questions that Cecil himself wouldn’t answer, or couldn’t answer, questions like why Cecil had looked  _exactly_ the way Carlos pictured him when he first heard him on the radio, questions like why there were recordings of his broadcasts dating back to the  _nineteen thirties_ , yet people who were only  _in_  their thirties remembered going to school with him. Questions like,  _what, exactly, is the Voice of Night Vale?_

And now he knew.

“I should have just trusted you, shouldn’t have pried,” he said.

“Carlos, it’s  _all right_ ,” said Cecil. “I don’t blame you for wanting to know more about me. When I first saw you, I wanted to know everything about you, and … you got answers,” he said, realizing. “You learned something about me and … you don’t like it. Carlos, tell me what it is—I can change it.”

Carlos closed his eyes and shook his head. The Voice of Night Vale didn’t know—of course he didn’t know. That was the point. But fuck the  _point_ ,  _fuck_  Station Management, Cecil deserved better than this. “You can’t change it,” he said. “Cecil, you’re—” The thing inside him pulled tight at his throat and pushed into his brain with a sharp  _NO_. “I … can’t tell you,” he said, when his voice was finally released. Because telling Cecil would be unscientific. Because the test subject couldn’t be allowed to know that he was an experiment.

Cecil gave a sorry nod. “I understand.” He sounded resigned.

What? “No, no Cecil, that’s not—there’s nothing  _wrong_  with you, you’re—you’re amazing.” Both parts of him thought so, if not for the same reasons. “Just—not what I expected.” He took Cecil’s arm—with his own arm, this time—and slowly pulled himself to his feet. He felt shaky, unbalanced. “It may take some adjustment on my part, but—” Cecil hadn’t changed, he reminded himself. Cecil had always been this. This was what Carlos had fallen in love with. It was just that now, he knew. “You know,” said Carlos. “This will work. My first crush, do you know who it was? It was the computer, the AI, in  _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ , and I think that …” he trailed off.

“You’re not making sense,” said Cecil. “Who else is in there, what—what did it do to you?”

“I don’t …” For the first time, he felt for the thing that was digging in his mind, and dug back. “It’s not someone else. Not really. It’s trying to be part of me and I think it … probably is.” Station Management wasn’t a single being, it turned out. It was more like a … collective, a swarm. “I wasn’t assimilated,” Carlos said. “I’m still myself, I’m almost certain. There’s just this … extra piece, this connection.” Because Station Management had wanted Carlos. Station Management was so eager to see what the human scientist would do after he learned the truth, so eager to be able to experiment from both sides, but Carlos was  _not_  going to take part. “I’m not going to play along,” Carlos said. “It won’t let me tell you what I’m not playing along with, but I promise, I won’t.” The other part of him disagreed, the other part of him thought that this was a wonderful opportunity, and that throwing it away out of spite would just be stupid.

The other part of him wasn’t in love with Cecil.

“You’re still my beautiful, perfect, brave Carlos,” said Cecil. “You really are.”

“I think there were … physical changes,” said Carlos. Because human beings were foreign to Station Management. It had to remake him into something … more like itself … before it could take hold.

“The tentacles startled me, that’s all,” said Cecil. “They’re just as beautiful as the rest of you.”

Carlos was standing firmer on his feet now, and he realized that this was because the writhing under his skin had stopped, had reached  _out_  from under his skin, was helping him keep his balance, and—tentacles. But Cecil thought they were beautiful. And Carlos found himself wishing he had a mirror. He took another deep breath. The air tasted less foreign. He probably wasn’t even breathing oxygen anymore, he realized, and found himself only mildly intrigued by this. Maybe he was in shock, maybe that was why he wasn’t freaking out as much as he ought to be, or maybe—the other part of him made one last push for dominance. He knew that it made no difference what the Voice thought of him, knew that any opinions the Voice might offer were relevant only in that it _had_ opinions, which was important, but that what those opinions were didn’t matter.

But Cecil still loved him, Cecil wasn’t horrified by what he had become, and the other part of him was wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write something creepy but it turned into sappy romantic fluff by the end so ... there you go.


End file.
